Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

  The write-up also said that Austin PD personnel had refused to comment when asked why a homicide detective was overseeing a missing persons case. The more loquacious Rondeau did tell the reporter, “At this point in time, we’ve had absolutely no indication of foul play and are assuming that Ms. Kemp is a runaway.” Good answer, but it didn’t address the question.

  There was one quote from Judge Kemp. “Like all teenagers, Janey can be inconsiderate and irresponsible when it comes to notifying us of her plans. Mrs. Kemp and I are confident that she’ll soon return. It’s much too soon for alarming speculation.”

  Brad actually jumped when his phone rang. With a shaking hand, he reached for the intercom button. “Yes?”

  “Your wife is on line two, Dr. Armstrong. And your next patient has arrived.”

  “Thanks. Give me five minutes.”

  He wiped the sweat off his upper lip and took several deep breaths before lifting the telephone receiver. It was time to play meek.

  “Hi, hon. Look, before you say anything, I just want you to know how sorry I am about last night. I love you. I hate myself for saying the things I did. That trash bag of stuff? History. I threw it away. All of it. As for the . . . the other . . . I don’t know what came over me. I’m—”

  “You missed your appointment.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your ten o’clock appointment with Mr. Hathaway. He called here because he’s been unable to reach you at your office.”

  “Christ. I forgot about it.” The truth was, he had. He’d come into his office, killed a half hour on the Internet, seen three patients, read the front-page story.

  “How could something that important slip your mind, Brad?”

  “I had patients,” he replied testily. “They’re pretty damn important, too. Remember our mortgage? Car payment? Grocery bill? I have a job.”

  “Which won’t matter if you get sent to prison.”

  He glanced down at the picture of Janey Kemp. “I’m not going to prison, not for missing one appointment with my probation officer.”

  “He’s being lenient. He rescheduled you for one-thirty this afternoon.”

  She was back on her high horse, talking to him like he was no older than their son. He was a grown-up, by God. “Apparently I’m not getting through to you, Toni. I’ve got work.”

  “And an addiction,” she snapped.

  Jesus, she was cutting him no slack whatsoever. “I told you I got rid of the magazines. I tossed the bunch of them in a Dumpster. Okay? Happy now?”

  Rather than sounding happy, her laugh sounded terribly sad. “Okay, Brad, whatever. But you’re not fooling anybody. Not Hathaway, and certainly not me. If you don’t keep this appointment, he’ll have to report it, and you’ll have to face the consequences.”

  She hung up on him.

  “And the horse you rode in on, sweetheart!” he shouted to the telephone receiver as he slammed it down. He sent his chair rolling back on its casters as he shot to his feet. Placing one hand on his hip and rubbing the back of his neck with the other, he began to pace.

  Any other time, he would be really pissed off at Toni for taking such a high-handed tone with him. And he was pissed off. Matter of fact, he was mad as hell. But Toni would keep. Today he needed to focus on a much more serious problem.

  When you lined it all up, things didn’t look so good for him. He was a convicted sex offender. The charge had been a complete falsehood and the trial a farce. Nevertheless, it was there on his personal record.

  Last night he’d had sex with a young woman. God help him if she was under seventeen. Never mind that she was as experienced as a ten-dollar whore—ten dollar, hell. For round two he’d given her a fifty-dollar “gratuity.” Despite her experience, if she was a minor, he’d committed a crime. And his wife, who had the ear of his group therapist and his probation officer, was probably already yapping to them about his recent violent tendencies.

  But what really had him concerned, what was causing his bowels to spasm, was that he couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen Melissa in the company of Janey Kemp.

  chapter 17

  Sergeant Curtis called Paris while she was spreading a piece of toast with peanut butter. “I mentioned cold cases last night?”

  “There’s one that’s similar?”

  “Maddie Robinson. Her body was discovered three weeks after her roommate reported her missing. A cattleman found it in a shallow grave in one of his pastures. Middle of nowhere. Cause of death, strangulation with a ligature of some kind. Decomposition was advanced. Scavengers and the elements had done significant damage.”

  Paris set aside her breakfast.

  Curtis continued. “But the coroner was able to determine that the body had been washed with an astringent agent.” There was a significant pause before he added, “Inside and out.”

  “So even if it had been found sooner—”

  “The perp had made damn sure any DNA evidence would be compromised to the point of making it negligible. Also no sign of either shoe prints or tire tracks. Probably weather eroded. No clues on clothing because there was none.”

  Paris felt heartsick for the victim who had suffered such a horrible and ignominious death. She asked Curtis what he knew about her.

  “Nineteen. Attractive but not a stunning beauty. She was a student. Her roommate admitted that they weren’t exactly nuns. Partied a lot. They went out nearly every night. Here’s where it gets really interesting. According to her, Maddie had been seeing someone she referred to as ‘special.’ ”

  “In what way?”

  “She didn’t know. Maddie was vague about what set this guy apart. The girls had been friends since junior high school. Usually confided everything. But Maddie wouldn’t tell her anything about this mystery guy except that he was cool and wonderful and special.”

  “The roommate never saw him?”

  “Didn’t come to their apartment. Maddie would meet him. The roommate didn’t know where. He never even called their apartment phone, only Maddie’s cell. The roommate’s theory was that he was married, and that was the reason for the secrecy. For all their exploits, she and Maddie had drawn the line at sleeping with married men. Not for moral reasons, but because there was no future in it, she said.

  “One day Maddie was in love, the next she announced that she was breaking off the relationship. She told her roommate that he was getting too possessive, which irritated her since he never took her on a real date. The only place they ever went was to his apartment—which she described as dreary—where they’d have sex. She hinted that it had become bizarre, even for her, and she enjoyed novelty. The roommate pressed her for details, but she refused to talk about it. All she’d say was that the affair was over.

  “To cheer her up, the roommate prescribed getting laid by someone else. Maddie took her advice. They went out, drank a lot, and Maddie brought a guy home with her. He was later cleared as a suspect.

  “Maddie Robinson was last seen on the shore of Lake Travis, where a large group of young people were celebrating the start of summer break. She and the roommate got separated. The roommate went home alone, assuming that Maddie had found a partner for the night. This was nothing unusual. But when Maddie hadn’t come home twenty-four hours later, she notified the police.

  “I wasn’t assigned the case, so it didn’t spring immediately to my mind. The trail got cold for the CIB detectives who were investigating, and the case got turned over to the other unit.” Summary complete, he took a deep breath.

  “So this happened roughly around the time spring semester ended?”

  “Late last May. The body was found June twentieth. Do you have recorded calls from that far back?”

  “In my files. Shall I bring you duplicates?”

  “ASAP. Please.”

  • • •

  “Stan?”

  He jumped when Paris walked into her office and caught him seated behind her desk. He recovered quickly and greeted her with a glum, “Hey.”


  She tossed her handbag onto the pile of printed material on her desk. “You’re in my seat.”

  Before coming into her office, she had gone to the storage room and retrieved several CDs containing recorded call-ins that she’d had transferred off the Vox Pro. She’d left them with an engineer and asked him to duplicate their contents onto audiocassettes.

  “Cassettes? That’s working backward, isn’t it?” he’d grumbled.

  Without wanting to explain that the CIB was still working with audiocassettes, she simply said, “Thanks,” and left before he had an opportunity to refuse her odd request.

  “What are you doing in my office?” she asked Stan now as she replaced him in her chair. As he’d done the night before, he cleared a corner of her desk and perched there, uninvited.

  “Because I don’t rate an office, and this was the most private place to wait.”

  “For what?”

  “My uncle Wilkins. He’s in a conference with the GM.”

  “About what?”

  “Me.”

  “Why, what’d you do?”

  He took exception. “How come everybody automatically assumes that I screwed up?”

  “Did you?”

  “No!”

  “Then why is your uncle Wilkins having a conference about you with our GM?”

  “Because of that goddamn phone call.”

  “Valentino’s phone call?”

  “It churned up some stuff. My uncle flew out here in the company jet early this morning, called and woke me up, ordered me to meet him here, and he meant immediately. So I break my neck to get here, and he’s already behind closed doors. I haven’t even seen him yet.”

  “What ‘stuff’?”

  Rather than answer her question, he asked one of his own. “Do I do a good job around here, Paris?”

  She shook her head with amusement and dismay. “Stan, you don’t do any job around here.”

  “I’m here every single weeknight until two o’clock in the freaking morning.”

  “You’re here in body. You occupy space. But you don’t do any work.”

  “Because nothing ever goes wrong with any of the machines.”

  “If it did, would you know how to correct it?”

  “Maybe. I’m good with gadgets,” he said petulantly.

  “ ‘Gadgets’ isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe millions of dollars’ worth of electronics. Do you even understand radio technology, Stan?”

  “Do you?”

  “I don’t have the title of engineer.”

  He was a spoiled brat, prone to whining. On any given night she felt like throttling him for his incompetence and casual approach to his job. Ineptitude was forgivable, but indifference wasn’t. Not in her book, anyway.

  Every time she spoke into her microphone, she was aware that hundreds of thousands of people were listening to her. She was touching them with her voice, in their cars and where they lived. She became a partner in whatever they were doing at the time.

  To her the listening audience wasn’t just a six-digit number on which to base an advertising rate. Each number represented an individual who was giving her his time and to whom she owed the best programming she could provide.

  Stan had never considered the human factor of their audience. Or if he had, it hadn’t been translated into work. He’d never shown any initiative. He put in his time, counting the minutes until sign-off, and then rushed out to do whatever it was that he did.

  But in spite of all that, she couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. He wasn’t here by choice. His future had been dictated the second he was born into the Crenshaw family. His uncle was a childless bachelor. Stan was an only child. When his father died, he became the heir apparent to the media empire, like it or not.

  No one in the corporation seemed willing to accept or admit that he was uninterested and ill-equipped to assume control when his uncle Wilkins stepped down, which probably wouldn’t be until he was pronounced dead.

  “I’m learning the business from the bottom up,” he told Paris sulkily. “I need to know a little about every aspect of it so I’ll be ready when it’s time for me to take over. At least that’s what Uncle Wilkins thinks.”

  “What stuff did Valentino’s call churn up?”

  His mouth twisted into a scornful frown. “It’s nothing.”

  “It was enough to get your uncle Wilkins in a spin.”

  He heaved a huge sigh. “Before I was assigned—read ‘banished’—to this swell radio station, I was working at our TV station in Jacksonville, Florida. Compared to this dump, it was paradise. I had a fling with one of the female employees.”

  “Then you’re not gay?”

  He reacted as if he’d been jabbed in the spine with a hot poker. “Gay? Who says I’m gay?”

  “There’s been speculation.”

  “Gay? Jesus! I hate these stupid rednecks around here. If you don’t drive a dual-axle pickup, drink Bud from a bottle, and dress like the Sundance Kid, you’re queer.”

  “What about the woman in Florida?”

  He picked up a paper clip and began reshaping it. “We got carried away in the office. Next thing I know, she’s crying sexual harassment.”

  “Which was untrue?”

  “Yes, Paris, it was untrue,” he said, enunciating each word. “The charge was as bogus as her thirty-six-C cups. I didn’t coerce her into having sex with me. In fact, she was on top.”

  “More information than I needed, Stan.”

  “Anyhow, she filed suit. Uncle Wilkins settled out of court, but it cost him a bundle. He got pissed at me, not her. Can you believe that? Said, ‘How stupid do you have to be to take your dick out at work?’ I asked him if he’d ever heard of Bill Clinton. A remark he didn’t appreciate, especially since all our newspapers had endorsed him for president.

  “Anyway, that’s why I’m here, serving time.” He tossed the now-misshapen paper clip into the wastebasket. It made a soft ping when it struck the metal bottom. “And that’s why he hopped the company jet and flew here this morning.”

  Paris could guess the rest. “After you told him about being questioned by the police, Wilkins thought he should come to Austin and make certain this unfortunate episode in Florida didn’t rear its ugly head.”

  “He called it damage control.”

  “Spoken like a true corporate godfather.”

  She now had the picture. Stan had been foisted onto 101.3 as punishment for mixing business with pleasure. Uncle Wilkins had omitted telling management about the incident with the company employee, but felt he should explain it now before the Austin PD uncovered it and suspicion was cast on his nephew.

  “Was that the only incident, Stan?”

  His eyes narrowed as he looked down at her from his lofty angle. “What do you mean?”

  “The question was simple enough. Yes or no?”

  The starch went out of him then. “That was the only time, and, believe me, I learned my lesson. I’ll never touch another employee.”

  “As an owner, that could make you vulnerable to litigation.”

  “I wish somebody had warned me about that before I went to Jacksonville.”

  Paris passed up telling him he shouldn’t have had to be warned. That was a policy he should have adopted without being told. She also refrained from calling him a creep for doing it under any circumstances.

  He looked across at her with a wounded expression. “Everybody thinks I’m gay?”

  How like Stan to prioritize the least important point. “You dress too well.”

  The electrician who’d duplicated the recordings stepped in to tell her that the cassettes were ready and that he’d left them for her at the lobby desk.

  “More cassettes?” Stan said.

  “This may not be the first time Valentino heralded a murder by calling me.”

  “What happened last night after you and Malloy raced out of here? I gather you didn’t catch Valentino.”

  “No, unfor
tunately.” She told him about the pay phone at the Wal-Mart store. “Patrol cars were there within minutes, but no one was around.”

  “I heard about the missing girl on the news this morning. Front page of the paper, too.”

  She nodded, recalling the quote from Judge Kemp. Janey’s parents were holding fast to their belief that her absence was by choice, which, to Paris’s mind, was a monumental mistake. On the other hand, she hoped they were right.

  She stood up and gathered her handbag, preparing to leave. “I’ll see you tonight, Stan.”

  “Who’s Dean Malloy?”

  The question came from out of the blue and caught her off guard. “I told you. Staff psychologist for the APD.”

  “Who moonlights as a bodyguard?” He gave her a sardonic look. “When I dropped off those cassettes at your house last night, the cop told me that Malloy was inside with you.”

  “I’m missing your point.”

  “Deliberately, I think. Who is Malloy to you, Paris?”

  If she didn’t tell him, he might go digging on his own and learn more than she preferred him to know. “He and I knew each other in Houston years ago.”

  “Mmm-hmm. I’m guessing you knew each other pretty well.”

  “Not pretty well, Stan, very well. He was Jack’s best friend.”

  Closing the conversation with that, she stepped around him and moved toward the door. But at the threshold, she paused and turned back. “What do you know about Marvin?”

  “Only that he’s a jerk.”

  “Is he into computers, the Internet?”

  He snuffled. “Like I would know. I haven’t exchanged more than a few grunts with him. Why the sudden interest?”

  She hesitated, not knowing if Marvin’s apparent flight was information that Curtis would want to be shared. “No reason. See you tonight.”

  • • •

  Paris and Sergeant Curtis sequestered themselves in a small interrogation room and sat across from each other at a scarred table. On it were the portable recorder he had used the day before and the cassette tapes she had brought from the radio station.

  They began their search for Valentino’s calls by listening to tapes recorded up to a week before Maddie Robinson’s disappearance. Yesterday she and Dean had agreed that Valentino was altering his voice. The affectation made it distinctive and instantly recognizable, thereby allowing her to fast-forward past voices obviously not his.